At last google reader has a search box September 6, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : internet, web2.0, tools , add a commentPossibly the most annoying inadequacy of Google’s news feed reader has at last been remedied. Hoo ray. It was alway confounding that the company which made a name for itself out of search couldn’t find a way to provide search on their own idiosynchratic implemention of a newsreader. I also wondered frequently why I stick with it instead of reverting to bloglines or the freestanding NetNewsWire. But I do, and it has a search box now, so there are only a few more annoying inadequacies left.
Apparently we have to thank Ben Chris and Jemma for finding the search box.
binary code inflation August 7, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Mac, tools , 3commentsI just gave in to some nagware and agreed to download a newer version of Fetch. It’s a necessary tool, because sometimes Dreamweaver is not sufficient or carries too much overhead. You just want a simple FTP program to move a file from one computer to another, and Fetch is one of the best options for Mac. Being a cautious sort of person I didn’t just copy the new version on top of the other, I renamed the old one first. Through this I noticed a huge differences in the file sizes.
- Fetch 5.0.4 = 13.7 Mb
- Fetch 5.2.1 = 56.3 Mb
What on earth could be going on here?
In theory, later versions of a simple piece of utility software like an FTP program should get slightly smaller as more efficient code is introduced, not over four times bigger!
Now that computer memory comes in chunks of 1Gb are we going to see the world’s first 500Mb text editor?
Facebook MySpace and Linkedin friends July 14, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : facebook, Flickr, Music, blogs and community, tools , 6comments
Escape from Cubicle Nation asks Are there any rules for social/business networking? We’re talking about Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin here.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, as a person who deals with the business of networking on the internet, you are aware that Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace are important places to see and be seen. If you are growing a business and want exposure and connection with your target audience, it is critical to explore these online communities.
The question is, how in the world do you know how or where to be seen, and most importantly, with whom?
It’s a good question, and I would add Twitter, MyBlogLog and Flickr to the conundrum. But don’t expect any finished answers, because this is a question you have to keep asking yourself from time to time for each network you are in. I’m just going to list some practices which I’ve adopted or observed for each.
Flickr
This is the only one which allows for some granularity of the relationship, on three levels. Family, Friends and Contacts. There’s also a strong link to my city, London, in the way I use it so my friends tend to be people I’ve met in person, or might do. Contacts are like bookmarks to people’s photostreams I want to keep track of.
MySpace
I have a musician’s MySpace so that’s slightly different, but not much. MySpace can turn into a pointless game, and I lost interest after a while. Initially I collected a bunch of links to people, mainly from the past, who influenced my own music. So my Top friends list was like an indication of taste. When new friend requests came in, (mostly from other musicians who are playing the game of “add, add, add”) I would check them out and be a bit discerning. There are some important connections to be made in Myspace, but eventually they get swamped by many extremely loose ties. If you stop adding, the interest in your profile dies. So now you can choose to block add requests from musicians, which shows how silly it has all become as a means of reaching a potential audience.
There are two types of LinkedIn users. Normal sensible people, and “power users”. These are essentially spammers who will link in with anybody in order to leverage their extended network for marketing purposes. They break the terms and conditions by advertising their email address as part of the name field, and thus allow total strangers to become their trusted business contacts.
LinkedIn is great for keeping an online CV, access to contact details and for recruitment. Link to real friends, business colleagues and important contacts. After that, there’s not much to do. With the new Answers function you can get useful suggestions or build a reputation by answering others.
MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog has crept up on me and I’m starting to find it interesting. When a new face appears in my sidebar widget I usually check. They have a function whereby if you visit another members blog a few times you get automatically added to their circle. So I think the general idea is to be quite free with your adds on this one, and it may help slowly to build readership, by seeding clusters of bloggers with common interests.
I’m getting twitter spam follower notifications already so activating the “Turn all your followers into friends” button seems like a really bad idea.
I saved the hot one for last.
Facebook has a tradition of using real names and reflecting real life friendships from its origins in the colleges. This is now changing a bit, with the wide open membership and platform but it shouldn’t end up like mySpace. Within Facebook there are the new applications, and some of these are linked with external apps which have their own social networking aspects. It’s not yet clear how all of this is going to settle out.
General Reflection
My approach seems to be generally a cautious one, attempting to keep a sense of real value in the connections I make. In some ways I may be missing opportunities to enlarge the circle, and I’m sure I should be doing more to nurture the connections which are already in place. Having a transparent online identity which is prolific and probably important to my longer term strategy engenders a certain reluctance to engage in aggressively direct marketing activities. I’m also having some thoughts about the bidirectional nature of add friend requests.
I’ll come back to this topic again, but now throw the question out to you. What are your own rules for adding friends in the different online networks and how do you see the general territory developing?
Rolling Your Own Online Office July 7, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Pajamanation, Microjobs, tools , 4commentsThis is a pretty good introduction and survey of communication tools for distributed teams, written by Josh Catone last month.
Rolling Your Own Online Office
The difference between the ventures that failed and those that succeeded was how well set up the communication structure was for the team.
I don’t really find the term ‘virtual office’ very helpful when describing an online toolset. To me its a misuse of metaphor. Like who nicked my virtual pencil sharpener, huh?
I have a real office, and it has a computer in it and I use that to communicate with real people in the world using various asynchronous channels. What’s ‘virtual’ about that?
Anyway, getting back to the article it seems to be a big recommendation for basecamp, with which I’m not familiar so I’m wondering if we should be considering that.
One dimension not mentioned is that of language. International distributed teams face communication challenges through the use of diverse languages, or through the participation of many people for whom English is a second language. However fluent and articulate a second language speaker may be, there are always going to be nuances, regional variation and vocabulary shift which can cause endless misunderstanding. Not that there’s likely to be a technological solution to that, but there may be some tools or procedures which wil help.
Desired feature: ignore threads in gMail July 3, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : listservs, tools , add a commentFunny I’ve been thinking about email functionality and I agree entirely with Jack’s analysis and feature request:
Knowledge Jolt with Jack: Desired feature: ignore threads in YahooGroups
Since I do read yahoogroups, googegroups, Mailman and other listservs in email rather than visit the websites, the feature requested could be implemented across all platforms through the use of a decent email client. I happen to use gMail, so it would be nice if Google would implement this. I’d like to be able to ignore threads and watch threads. Maybe authors too. Then I’d be back somewhere near the usability I had with Forte Agent about 10 years ago!
Joomla 1.5 and the limits of open source development June 18, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : web2.0, tools , add a commentMiguel explains the complicated open source licensing controversy in which Joomla the CMS has becom embroiled:
Joomla 1.5 and the limits of open source development « eme ká eme
Yet it’s in trouble.Either Joomla thrives (and changes the world a little bit more), or it sinks.
London Geekdinner with Jyri Engeström of Jaiku - Tuesday 12th June June 11, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London, tools , add a commentI haven’t been able to attend a London Geek Dinner for a while so I’m looking forward to meeting up with people at this one tomorrow :
What is Jaiku?
It’s a web and mobile service that brings people closer together by enabling them to share their rich presence. It’s about enabling people to stay connected, rather than “connecting people“, because the connections with phones are often quite random - you don’t know if the other person is able to take your call but you still try because that’s your only option. Jaiku is more about a constant state of connectedness.
Only if your phone is switched on though I hope….
Considering MovableType 4.0 June 6, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : tools , 1 comment so farMarshall Kirkpatrick writes a considered piece about the a new version of Movable Type, which is due to go Open Source later this year.
Marshall Kirkpatrick » Will You Consider Using MovableType 4.0?
MovableType, from SixApart, is one of the oldest blogging platforms on the market but last night the MT team released a new version that’s worth taking note of.
Divshare - Free file hosting for mp3s and blog pictures March 4, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music, blogs and community, tools, Wiki , 6commentsI think I can see this one spreading steadily through the blogs and social networking sites.
Divshare allows you to upload as many files as you like, up to 200Mb per file and then serves them up wherever you like for free, as text links, hotlinked from your blog or embedded as an mp3 player. And there’s a divshare uploader plugin for Wordpress.org which makes it so easy to add pictures to a blog without incurring any bandwith or file quota charges, whilst keeping them all organised together under your divshare account, accessible from the dashboard. This would probably have some advantages over using flickr as a file hosting resource for blogs and wiki.
The embedded mp3 flash player could appear on millions of homepages or profiles in mySpace and similar environments, since the code for embedding is available to all who visit the song.
All in all, this confirms to me that we are undergoing a seachange in the pricing models for internet hosting, towards a position where disk space and bandwidth are no longer explicitly charged for. How that works out in terms of the extra electricity required to power the ever increasing number of processors and file servers I’m not too sure.
How I would like to use SecondLife February 12, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, online facilitation, tools , 2commentsI don’t know how the marketing of SecondLife works exactly, but the buzz is not going away, it’s building. At present there are educator orientated communities bumping into each other as they clamour to organise tours of the 3d graphical world and attempt to analyse how it might be utilised to support educational community purposes. I’ve endeavoured to tag along myself a few times, albeit hindered by technical and timezone problems. The sheer number of people who want to book their place on the tourbus is proof in itself of some kind of excitement being generated, even if it’s only by the prospect of some free tuition in an unknown environment with free registration. But these organised large groups have proved problematic, while providing some individuals with worthwhile learning experiences.
* There’s the communication problem. In-world text chat takes up screen space and includes anybody within a certain distance while skype conferences can leave a bunch of zombie avatars doing nothing, with their owners just talking about it from afar.
* Then there’s the problem of bandwidth lags, freezing action and waiting for the scenery to refresh, which to my understanding logically seem to get worse when increasing numbers of dynamic objects, avatars, are gathered in one area.
* Different operational skill levels make it hard to orchestrate a learning session, with new arrivals asking questions which are time consuming to resolve whilst relative veterans get bored.
* There’s a strong sense that all of this is missing the point!
Perhaps the immersive 3d environment is designed to be explored and experienced by individuals, encountering others tangentially to interacting with the environment itself. In our working lives, we tend to meet people whilst we are doing other things, or because we have a purpose. We don’t just stand in a room and start demanding to be told who is supposed to be the tour leader, well not unless we are on a package holiday to China.
So some people are coming to early conclusions that while Secondlife can provide an exciting and possibly addictive experience for some, it doesn’t have much to offer for groups or leaders who wish to use it as a tool for supplementing their community building communications channels. And they may be right.
But what can it offer over and above the normal asynchronous social software tools such as listserves and web conferences? Personally I think I’ve had the best experiences through encountering small groups of two or three people in one location where I will return on the rare occasions these days that I launch the SL application. But there can be long gaps equivalent to watching the paint dry in between times. If there’s nobody else at all on that particular island, I’ll mooch about for a while then maybe try somewhere else or give up. The places with more than a handful of avatars present always seem to increase the probability of trouble though.
I’m reminded of one of the four dichotomies which emerged from my research into current thinking about distributed communities of practice last year.
Technology as tools for communities to use - as opposed to technology as environments in which new communities may evolve.
Secondlife seems to me to lend itself much more to the environment end of the spectrum.
So my ideal scenario would be to be able to drop in to a regular hanging out spot, and have a reasonable chance of meeting somebody I know, or a friend of a friend, and then most usefully random people who are attracted to the in world geographical location through having common interests, facilitated by the various related communities which used that location as a starting off point. The place in question is called Boracay Island, perhaps I’ll catch you online there sometime.
( “photo” by Nick Noakes )
Meanwhile, here’s a quote which I think begins to give an idea of the type of casual
encounter which I think points towards the unique advantage which 3d graphical environments may eventually offer.
From Cool News:
Sure, you can shop on Amazon but you have no idea how many other people are there, shopping with you. “There’s no way to notice if you and another shopper are looking at the same product, and start up a conversation about it.” What Second Life might do is provide an alternative, browser-free entry point to the Amazon store, and enable you to interact with shoppers and clerks.
One more thing. Is it just me being a bloke or is a lot of the appeal really just about dressing up and shopping?
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